Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/300

260 life. We are come from the country of youth where life cried with a sound as of triumph in the morning; now the valleys of evening hold us; our energy glows dully in the ashes of fatigue; and the wonderful voices of the dawn are whispers in the twilight of our lives.

My friend, you know great cynicism, too sad to be trivial, and an indifference born of fatigue; but there is one thing that rests.

There is one pure emotion for man on earth, one huge, simple thing that expression shrinks from, that noise shuns, that the days slight. It slights, and shuns, and shrinks from being known. It does not feel the want of pity, for it is beautiful in an everlasting strength, and with the indifference beyond sorrow. This is hate. Hate is a quiet giant who never explains himself to weak men. Anger, exasperation, envy, and jealousy pass by him unnoticed, and he sits brooding with an animosity that is too deep to stoop to revenge. He hopes that the soul he hates may know it, though, some day.

Exasperation fades from distance of time or place, and anger is as short-lived as a fire. We cannot remain faithful in these things. As the years of our life pass by, and we learn how pitiful things are, as time teaches us our vanity, and thought becomes bounded in thinking, memory draws back to the years that are gone, and joins the shadows of our ancient selves that lag behind us. But great hate, the hate that we have met upon the way and have looked into the eyes of, which so walks on with us for ever—this admits of no anger, no exasperation, no tirades, or curses. Its nature is silence and it shall not be forgotten.

Men are many-doored houses, and the visitors to our natures depart. But beyond the gaudy drawing-rooms, decorated with

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